Posts tagged “cartoons”

There may be something wrong with having a tendency to see life through certain cartoons, but yah, here I go again. Like many Americans out there concerned with how the next election will turn out, I want to know how exactly the opposition to the Democratic Party will go about their plan of battle. I don’t know about you but I have battle plans constantly rolling around in my head, because well, I’m more than concerned. I’m borderline frantic. I’m on edge. I’m wondering if Mitt Romney and the campaign leaders will actually have the bollocks to take the gloves off and put forth the effort to beat the Democratic Party at its own game. So far, I think they are behind on getting this show on the road, but I can be patient… Okay, no I can’t. Might I relay some of my thoughts on the subject?

Is there anyone on the opposition of the Dems that can think like a liberal? I’m not saying is there a person that thinks this way all the time, just part-time, like on an “on-call” basis? This is very important, because there are certain liberal weaknesses we all enjoy and could be used like a bridge, a corpus callosum if you will, to the casm that spans our right brains and left brains. Weaknesses like our love for movies and cartoons. It’s a welcomed weakness, but a weakness none the less because we tend to let our guard down when we are being entertained.

I heard two different references to the movie industry by conservative analysts in relation to how this campaign should be run. I think they are on the right track. Janine Turner made a comment about how actors in a great movie are super talented and feel bonded like one cohesive team. Dennis Miller referred to how Chris Christie running with Romney would be like Kevin Costner and Sean Connery in The Untouchables. Unstoppable. Bulletproof. That just shows how we are as conservatives seeking and longing for a hero. That’s thinking liberally in a good way. We know realistically that real heroes don’t run for the office of President and Vice President because they’re not stupid enough to walk into that burning building, but we are definitely wishing on a star aren’t we? I think we should prove to the other side that we haven’t lost that sense of wonder. Let’s show them we have a sense of adventure by showing what kind of change America can have when individuals like them imagine what can be built with a little hard work and cooperation. Why not think the whole campaign strategy could be a metaphorical representation of our ideal America and get the attention of a lot more of the folks who tend to think that way. Let me give you an example.

Cartoons are an art form and art was created to speak messages to us without having to actually be interested in the message. Even liberals turn on their right brains for anything that is portrayed as a display of “art”. I think this is why art can be so powerful.

Cartoons have this wonderful way of keeping our attention to the very end because we are being entertained instead of being brow beat by live people who want to get their point across. Even when they are completely demented, the good ones with a moral lesson intertwined, seem to be the most successful cartoons. Why? Because we want to be better people, we just don’t want to be told to be. In my spare time, I like to write children’s books and the best ones are those that teach a lesson without seeming like they are teaching anything. SpongeBob is a perfect example of how good moral behavior can be disguised behind strange behavior and be hugely popular. Now if you’ve never watched SpongeBob, you have no idea what I’m talking about. And if you’ve never watched SpongeBob you definitely have never watched a fairly new cartoon out there called Adventure Time.

Talk about art, Adventure Time’s artistic staff is absolutely stunningly talented. The colors and creativity that goes into each episode is entertainment alone. Then they add original musical pieces that are really quite clever and you have something any one with eyeballs would watch. That is my hope, because Adventure Time isn’t just a great cartoon it implies something very important about what kind of people we should all be, heroes in a world of uncertainty.

The problem with being a hero is that it’s complicated. That’s the main theme. To me that kind of sounds like a story about being American. Hey, this is art. I can interpret it how I want to. We are so powerful as a whole, but as individuals it seems we are losing our grasp of what we really need to do with our lives. Fin and Jake the dog (not his dog) are the heroes of our story who always want to be good and win battles for that which is good. Fin is a thirteen year old young man who metaphorically represents our youthful vision of America and the world. Jake, Fin’s best friend and a super stretchy shape-shifting dog represents the ever-expanding opportunity and freedom available in America that is to be taken advantage of in order to win. Princess Bubblegum, who is this super-genius sweetheart, represents the establishment, what is all-good and worth fighting for. It’s funny because she tends to create bad things by accident (like our government) and needs Fin’s help to get rid of them. One episode she created zombies and had to get Fin to keep it quiet while she worked on a cure or the candy kingdom would destroy itself in panic Essentially he had to make up and partake in what can only be described as a government cover-up while at the same time he righteously fought zombies to keep the unappreciative candy people safe. Tell me you don’t see a common theme here.

If you really observe closely you’ll see several poignant pieces with very American themes. A hero doesn’t mean always killing the foe, but sometimes it does. Sometimes you don’t recognize the foe because they are dressed in poor sad case clothing and pull at your heartstrings. Many times, it says you don’t know who your foe is until the very end no matter what you do. Sometimes there’s a possibility to solve problems with tools and technology and sometimes it takes brute strength to win. Sometimes you have to hold weak people up and sometimes you just have to teach them to turn their weaknesses into strength. Some problems are not your problem and you should stay out of it, but if it’s a situation where evil is present, it’s always your problem. Sometimes there are blood sucking dead girls that sneak into your house, but they’re not necessarily evil. Okay, I don’t know what that last one has to do with America, but my point is, this cartoon has some very conservative themes in it that are a joy to absorb. Just don’t tell any liberals you watch Adventure Time. Just like kids if they find out you like it they won’t watch it anymore.I’m just sayin’.

Once something is labeled as something with a moral backbone, you have to fight harder to make people pay attention. Everyone expects too much of individuals with moral messages all the while not even listening. Like Fin, a hero doesn’t always know what to say. Good people aren’t 100% good, but it doesn’t make us hypocrites either. Good people are sometimes violent and loud, because that’s what it takes. Good people plan because they don’t always know how to fix things on the fly. When people call you slow or lazy or unprepared in the meantime, do not quit. Never give up. Never surrender. Never be ashamed of being a methodical planner. Remember that Republicans! It’s such an adventure to be good.

With the new developments and precedents being set by the powers that be in America recently, I’m positive it is time to start hunkering down and becoming more aware of our hero work. A big part of that is making sure we have an America that can actually produce and house heroes. If we let America crash and worse yet go more towards and entitlement society, where we have to depend on the government for our scraps,individuals will become powerless and it will be too late. We are literally going to have to take advantage of all our tools, technology and tenacity to fight against the evil succubus that is in power today. I don’t know if that includes time to watch cartoons, but in light of what I’ve said about it, maybe you can relax a little knowing liberals and those who do not care about politics are probably sitting and watching something that is good for them too.

President Obama’s campaign spent more than $30 million to run TV ads on the subject of Romney being bad for American business for nearly three months even though the allegation that Mr. Romney “shipped jobs to China and Mexico” was called “misleading, unfair and untrue” by the Washington Post fact checker and labeled “bunk” in an editorial. The Annenberg Center’s FactCheck.org said it found no evidence to support the claim that Romney shipped American jobs overseas, but still the commercials and “legal slander” continue.

I would imagine that over the next few months they are going to try and go all out to widen the gulf between those who know how to make/save money and those who do not. They are going to try to paint a picture of business people and rich business people in particular as those who use sneaky tactics to make money. They will portray hard work as something only noble poor people do. They will make poor people feel even more hopeless about their attempts at hard work and saving by telling them that both the rich and the government are miraculous staples in this country that can never be matched or achieved or changed by the common man. They will tell us the only difference between the two is that rich people want to remain rich so they do anything, use any and all hidden resources to keep it that way and that in contrast the government uses its “magic” to help the people. They will tell us the only way to change things is to give the government more of our support not the “mysterious” rich business people.

So how do we counter this Cro-Magnon campaign? We can’t stay on the level and just keep up with the status quo. So far, Obama and the Dems are the status and we the Republicans, we’re the quo. Let’s say no to the quo. I say we need to go over the top imaginative. While they use their cash trying to lie and do those things I mentioned above, the Republicans, Independents, Tea Partiers and Dems who give a damn need to spend their money on wowing the hell out of us with a vision of a great future. Show it to us. I don’t care if you have to hire Steven Spielberg himself. We need to out liberal mind the liberals. The only thing liberals like more than dwelling in their own sorrow is being distracted from the pain with something spectacularly inspiring.

Show us how private people and rich businessmen with big imaginations turn the world around. Bring as many of these men and women to the table and relay their potential to as many Americans as possible. Show the world that we will not rely on the government to make the leading strides in technology. Show us how innovators like Burt Rutan and Richard Branson are going to go all “X Prize” on our ass. Show us how we will therefore breathe new life back into innovation, breeding business, more engineers and therefore more wealth. All those bridges and wonderful things we have were built by engineers not the government, President Obama. No, I didn’t build it, but some regular hard-working Americans did. The government may have given its permission to build the bridge, but they didn’t build it or even plan it probably. But you know what? That’s all it can do. Obama doesn’t want anyone to think about the fact that all the government can really do is give you permission to do something or not do something. Do you really want them to do this in all aspects of your life? You don’t even let your mom do that. Do you?

Back to the point. I think if we take the over the top, high energy, high special effect, historical fiction, science fiction-type approach we could really get more of the liberal types to open up their minds a little bit to our cause. That shouldn’t be as hard a trick as what Obama and the Dems have to do. They have to try to convince us that the government can do all that inventing and a bag chips too. Well, they have NASA, I guess. Oh, wait, no. They’re in the process of dismantling that. Hmm. I don’t know how they’re going to show us anything positive in motion for the future. The auto industry is doing just fine on its own, without any help from the government and has been for some time now. So I guess the car companies have already burst the government’s bubble on taking credit for that one too.

What it comes down to is this. Fight negative pseudos with positive pseudos. You can’t fight all Obama’s lies with the cold hard truth necessarily. We saw this when Romney had his “Night at the Apollo” as I like to call it. Even though the NAACP was slightly receptive to Romney’s speech in which he refused to pander it wasn’t exactly something that inspired anyone in the audience to vote for him. What I refuse to do in contrast to many of the commentators I saw who spoke about the speech Romney gave at the NAACP, is imply that the audience members were racist and would not vote for Romney because he doesn’t want to speak “their language”. That’s ridiculous. I think they will if he can inspire them. Remember, many African-Americans who were supporters of Obama are feeling in general, pretty darn used by the Obama campaign.

I think instead of using people or a particular group of people, we need to actually give them something they can use as a constituency to better their cause. If you give them something they need, their support will come. Come to think of it there are a lot of groups that have been used by the Obama campaign. They know they’re being used, they just expected something in return. “Dollar make me holler, honey boo boo.” Sorry, I had to. Find out what they need and use our imagination to actually give something to that effect to them. Anything is better than empty promises. Anything.

Republicans don’t need a miracle. We just need to appeal to liberals’ better, let’s say more idealistic and prosperous nature. Let’s embrace our liberals with tattoos and show them how to be true rebels. Help them surprise the living hell out of employers by showing them how to get skills and education that overshadow how they look. Let’s be realistic. Employers are going to have to get used to working with tattoos just like they had to get used to working with women. We can be extremely distracting, but none the less can be invaluable assets to any team if we can bring the skills. Conservative leaders, surprise the hell out of liberals and other conservatives alike by supporting and appreciating the harmless if not good things about being liberal. In fact I think it would behoove the Mitt Romney campaign to recruit as many tattooed conservatives as they could find and publicize the hell out of them. They do exist! It won’t be an easy task but I think it’s worth it. Tattooed people talk to other tattooed people. That’s just a fact. Now you might say, well why don’t we just get old Mitt up there in the tattoo shop? Why don’t we all get holey faces and ink up our skin? Well, that would just be too contrived wouldn’t it and we don’t want to do that. I’m not getting a tattoo. I think I get more attention without them. Then again, I won’t be as effective at a biker rally as Spike with his Sarah Palin tattoo, will I? Isn’t politics exciting? Isn’t the whole thing a big dirty contrived mess? Absolutely, so we might as well make it worth our while and win the damn thing. Like I said, it’s adventure time!